Handbooks and Policies

By now, many people have heard about the Yelp/Eat24 employee who published a rant last month on social media platform Medium addressed to Company CEO Jeremy Stoppelman relating to how her entry-level compensation prevented her from affording food and otherwise living comfortably in the Bay Area. Shortly after the post was published, the employee tweeted

A District Court in Louisiana concluded recently that a television station’s inconsistent application of its social media policy entitled a terminated employee to defeat summary judgment regarding his discrimination claim. The television station in question, KTBS, had implemented a social media policy that included a prohibition on employees responding to viewer complaints. The station also

Back in August 2014, we discussed an NLRB decision, which concluded that employees’ use of Facebook’s “like” button can constitute protected concerted activity under Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act and that the employer’s termination of the employees was an unfair labor practice under the Act. The Second Circuit recently affirmed the NLRB’s decision.

In somewhat of a surprise, recently the NLRB affirmed an Administrative Law Judge’s decision, which had rejected the NLRB General Counsel’s challenge to a portion of an employer’s social media policy as unlawful. The employer, Landry’s Inc., which operates various enterprises, including Bubba Gump Shrimp Restaurants, Inc., had adopted a social media policy in its

The NLRB’s Office of the General Counsel recently published an advice memorandum regarding an employer’s social media policy that provides yet another example of the NLRB’s disapproval of policies that use overbroad language without specific examples of prohibited conduct. The employer, KMOV-TV (owned by Belo, Corp.), had implemented a social media policy that included a

An NLRB Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) recently found that a news media policy issued by Phillips 66 violated Section 8(a)(1) of the NLRA, which prohibits employers from interfering with the exercise of employees’ rights to organize. The ALJ’s decision addressed the “News Media Guidelines” issued by the company in late 2012. The guidelines were sent

In a recently released Advice Memorandum, the NLRB Office of the General Counsel provided some further guidance on how provisions of an employee social media policy could run afoul of Section 8(a)(1) of the NLRA. That Section prohibits employers from interfering with the exercise of employees’ rights to organize under Section 7 of the NLRA.

The NLRB, in a rare decision related to social media use that employers will like, recently upheld an employer’s withdrawal of the rehire offers of two employees based solely on a Facebook exchange, finding that the exchange was not protected under the National Labor Relations Act because it exhibited the employees’ “planned insubordination in specific detail.”

A story out of Florida highlights how an employee’s social media posts can spell trouble for an employer. A cook at a Chili’s restaurant in Valrico, Florida, posted shirtless pictures of himself in the Chili’s kitchen, and provided enough information to identify the restaurant location. The local ABC affiliate sent the photos to the state

Triple Play Sports Bar and Grille has appealed to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals to review the NLRB’s recent decision that employees’ use of the Facebook “like” button constituted concerted protected activity under Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act. As outlined in our earlier post covering that NLRB decision, the NLRB’s ruling

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